"When we play computer games, we prepare for a future inside of virtual worlds."

LAS VEGAS—As the second and final day of the 2015 DICE Summit came to a close, Alexey Pajitnov took the stage in a rare public appearance to talk frankly about the history and legacy of Tetris, his most famous creation. Seated next to longtime business partner and Tetris Company Managing Director Henk Rogers, Pajitnov told the game's stories in the form of a Q&A—and afterward, the duo spoke to Ars Technica about the series' past and future.

The panel began with Pajitnov recalling the game's creation, which happened in 1984 while he worked for the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences. "I did a lot of programming and research in computer science, but my heart was in puzzles and riddles—all this silly stuff," he told the DICE crowd. He was inspired by five-square pentomino piece puzzles and wanted to make a computer version of putting similar pieces together. That took him quite some time, he admitted, thanks to having "no libraries or anything like that" to consult while creating a game from scratch.

Rogers described his first trip to Russia to secure the distribution rights for the famed Game Boy version—which, at the time, he had planned to publish through his company Bullet-Proof Software. His story didn't go into the legal battles that Nintendo eventually won against Atari, but it also revealed previously unknown details about Rogers' negotiations. For one, Rogers admitted to a personal $2 million stake in the matter, as he had borrowed that much money from his in-laws to fund the first Game Boy version's printing.

"The day before [we met], I was told, a small potato business man has come to visit, would I like to meet him?" Pajitnov said. "When we started talking, I realized [for my] first time, I met a real game designer. The knowledge of the stuff, the passion for the game, that’s something you can’t hide. We start liking each other right away, even surrounded by all these bureaucrats."

After coming to an understanding with Pajitnov, Rogers then had to negotiate with Pajitnov's bosses for Tetris' rights; that required, among other things, having to sit next to a telephone for eight hours—"your call could come through at any time," thanks to how Soviet operators connected international calls—until his lawyer in Japan answered. Rogers begged for a last-second contract. "Give me all the rights so I can give Nintendo the rights," Rogers said. "No more than 20 pages, no big words. I will have to explain every word in this contract, and we won’t get a second shot, so it has to be fair for them, fair for me. 24 hours later, I got the best contact I’d ever seen in this industry, it was great."

“Tetris will be surrounded by war, not peace”

Rogers took the blame for one of the Game Boy edition's most annoying features: its four-second delay before letting players into the "start" screen. "[With Nintendo], I had to pretend that the Russians were a tough negotiator and were not going to accept this or this or this. I apologize to all of you who played Game Boy Tetris, but I forced them to display my copyright screen [which included his company's name] for four seconds"—and to leave it up for as long as eight seconds if players didn't hit the Start button. He also recalled a major fix made to the game's random-piece generator three days before the cartridge version went into production, and he said that Nintendo missed it in testing because "in a game like Mario, it doesn't matter. That game doesn't need a real random number generator."

Ultimately, Rogers credited his "naïveté" for convincing Soviet authorities to license the game—which included storming into a government office without an official invite, a move so gauche that even his Russian translator wouldn't follow him into the building. "That’d be like going to North Korea today and trying to license a North Korean game," Rogers said. "You just don’t do it."

Pajitnov talks about pentominoes.

Sam Machkovech

Pajitnov talks about the first Tetris prototype.

Sam Machkovech

Pajitnov was asked whether he'd do anything differently if he could relive that big Tetris deal—especially in terms of giving up his rights to the game for 10 years. "I wouldn’t do it differently even now," he answered. "It was a strategic decision which I did write, that I am proud of my vision at the time. Otherwise, if I fought for my royalty or rights, Tetris would be surrounded by war, not by peace." He then admitted that he had been threatened with jail time by the Soviet government if he'd accepted Tetris' merchandising rights. "I tried to retain small piece of Tetris rights for myself," Pajitnov said. "They really threatened. But you [Rogers] pushed me away from this."

He and Rogers stressed the importance of Tetris always being in a single company's overall control, which transferred from Nintendo to The Tetris Company in 1996—and specifically thanked "our alliance with Nintendo" for going on a trademark and patent spree when the game first launched. By 1996, the duo had established the "Tetris Guideline" to protect a wide range of Tetris-game attributes, including rotation speed and how long the game waits until a falling piece "sticks" to anything it touches, "so that people can go from one machine to another" without having to relearn major mechanics.

“I've already imagined Tetris in VR”

The last major challenge to that Tetris Guideline system came with the game's transition to touch screens, a control scheme that Pajitnov admitted to Ars he is "still frustrated" by. The issue comes from translating a "seven button" game like Tetris to a touch platform, he said, especially when touch-and-slide doesn't work across all mobile devices worldwide, and Rogers echoed complaints with the latest "tap to automatically place" system. "[In normal versions], people make the mistakes that make you wanna play more Tetris," Rogers said. "If the computer makes the mistakes—it doesn't give me any choices—that’s a different kind of frustration."

The duo admitted to Ars that they've been dreaming about virtual-reality versions of Tetris "since the '90s," but with the rise of Oculus Rift, they're "about to" begin experiments on head-tracking versions of the puzzler in earnest. For now, those versions will employ restraint, not eye-popping excess. "I’ve already imagined Tetris in VR," Rogers said. "I wouldn’t imagine something with core changes. When children play a game, they have to see everything in the game at any moment. Once you hide things—behind your back, behind something—they start losing the understanding. As children grow up, they start getting the concept of, 'there’s a thing hidden behind here,' and play the game as if it’s there, but most people don’t graduate to that level in gaming."

Further Reading

Pajitnov told the DICE crowd that his favorite modern games are still puzzlers, and he namechecked PopCap classics like Bejeweled and Zuma alongside modern, indie delights like Threes and Flow. (He also admitted to still maintaining a World of Warcraft addiction.) When asked about his Tetris habits, Pajitnov told Ars that he prefers to play Tetris Zone, a PC-only version launched in 2007 that has since been discontinued. "It's a really guideline version of Tetris, which I adore and know very well," Pajitnov said. "As far as Tetris is concerned, I always come back to my computer and play with the keyboard."

The DICE panel concluded with Rogers and Pajitnov insisting that Tetris has a future as a sport—not just an "e-sport," but something that could reach Olympic-level competition. "100 years ago, people played sports to prepare themselves for a life of physical activity," Rogers said. "Today, when we play computer games, we prepare ourselves for a future in which most of what we do is inside of virtual worlds. The practice of playing computer games is exactly what our children need to prepare themselves for a lifetime of virtual labor."

Listing image by Sam Machkovech

Latest Ars Video >

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

First Look: Xbox Adaptive Controller

Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech visits Microsoft for a first-hand look at the company's new controller that focuses on accessibility.